May 29 (TheWrap.com) - Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has outbid competitors to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers for a record $2 billion from disgraced owner Donald Sterling, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. The bid exceeded a $1.6 billion offer from David Geffen and the Guggenheim Group and a $1.2 billion bid from Los Angeles-based investors Tony Ressler and Steve Karsh. According to the Times, Shelly Sterling agreed to the sale, but...

David Geffen says that his mom, who ran a corset and brassiere shop in Brooklyn, taught him the perils of being hustled. It was rich advice as Dec. 24 Forbes makes clear in "The Richest Man in Hollywood." It's the saga of Geffen, 47 and a bachelor, who used guile, tough-mindedness, a bit of dishonesty, and serendipity to verge on becoming Tinseltown's first billionaire. He`ll reach the brink after collecting a check for $660 million, his slice of the buyout of MCA Inc. by Matsushita Electric Industrial...

By Ronald Grover LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group that includes billionaire media executive David Geffen, television icon Oprah Winfrey and Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison bid more than $1.5 billion for the Los Angeles Clippers professional basketball team, according to a person familiar with the bid. The bid was one of several for the franchise. Geffen's group also includes Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter and President Todd...

DreamWorks SKG, the production company formed by Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has reached a preliminary accord to build a $50 million animation studio in Glendale, Calif., 10 miles north of Los Angeles. The studio, on land owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, would employ 1,000 people.

LOS ANGELES, May 29 (Reuters) - Former Microsoft Corp chief executive Steve Ballmer has won the bidding for the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers franchise with a $2 billion offer, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported on Thursday. Ballmer outbid two groups, one led by media mogul David Geffen that offered $1.6 billion and another from Los Angeles investors who bid $1.2 billion, the Times reported without identifying its source. Ballmer's spokesperson had no...

By Ronald Grover (Reuters) - Investment bank Guggenheim Partners and a group headed by billionaire David Geffen plan to submit a joint bid for the Los Angeles Clippers pro-basketball team, according to a person with knowledge of the bidding process. Geffen's group includes television icon Oprah Winfrey and Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison. In 2012, Guggenheim headed a group that included basketball great Magic Johnson and bought the LA Dodgers baseball...

Hollywod icon Michael Ovitz blames the collapse of his company, Artists Management Group, on David Geffen and other members of the entertainment industry, whom he described as the "Gay Mafia." "If I establish the foundation of the negativity, it all comes down to David Geffen and (New York Times reporter) Bernie Weinraub," Ovitz says in the August issue of Vanity Fair. "Everything comes back to those two. Geffen comes up with the spin, and Weinraub parrots it back, quoting the same...

Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Shelly Sterling is mounting a hurried sale of the team she and her husband have owned for 33 years and could name a prospective new owner of the NBA franchise by the end of the week, a person familiar with the situation said. The co-founder of investment bank Guggenheim Partners and its president are helping billionaire media executive David Geffen put together a group to bid on the Los Angeles Clippers. Guggenheim said in a statement on Wednesday...

Toy tie-in: Hasbro Inc., which produces Kenner, Playskool, Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers toys, said it will team up with DreamWorks SKG, Hollywood's newest entertainment venture, to develop and market a line of products to be called DreamWorks Toys. Hasbro said the partnership will create original toys and games as well as lines based on DreamWorks' motion picture, animation, television and interactive projects. DreamWorks was formed by Steven Speilberg, Jeffrey...

Oprah Winfrey is at the center of an empire that includes stakes in a cable network and a glitzy magazine. Is she about to add a major sports team to her holdings? "Oprah Winfrey is in discussions with David Geffen and Larry Ellison to make a bid for the Los Angeles Clippers should the team become available," said Nicole Nichols, a spokeswoman for the lifestyle guru, in a statement. The Wall Street Journal previously reported Winfrey's...

Denial: Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.'s chief executive and chairman, won't invest in a new Hollywood studio headed by director Steven Spielberg, a Microsoft spokeswoman said Friday. However, Gates has talked to Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg about providing some "content" for their effort, the spokeswoman said. The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Gates, the richest man in the United States, harbors directing ambitions. The paper said he would be...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Talk show host turned entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey is in talks with billionaire media executive David Geffen and Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison to make a bid to buy the Los Angeles Clippers should the team become available, her spokeswoman said On Wednesday. The statement from Winfrey came a day after the National Basketball Association imposed a lifetime ban against Clippers owner Donald Sterling for racist remarks attributed to...

Los Angeles music and movie mogul David Geffen has sold one of Jackson Pollock's most-admired "drip paintings" for $140 million, a deal that appears to end the brief reign of Gustav Klimt's golden Adele Bloch-Bauer portrait as the painting sold for the highest known price in history. Geffen declined to comment Thursday, and international financier David Martinez, who was identified by anonymous sources in The New York Times as the buyer, did not return messages. But the Los Angeles Times...

Talk show host turned entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey is in talks with billionaire media executive David Geffen and Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison to make a bid to buy the Los Angeles Clippers should the team become available, her spokeswoman said Wednesday. The statement from Winfrey came a day after the National Basketball Association imposed a lifetime ban against Clippers owner Donald Sterling for racist remarks attributed to him and moved to force him to sell his team....

Randall Arney, whose term as artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre ended abruptly with his resignation in 1995, is again an artistic director, this time at the not-for-profit Geffen (as in David Geffen, movie mogul) Playhouse in Los Angeles. Arney's departure from his post at Steppenwolf left him with some hurt feelings, but he has remained a member of the ensemble and last year returned here to direct "The Beauty Queen of Leenane." Now based in Los Angeles, he has not yet assembled a season for the Geffen,...

LOS ANGELES, May 29 (Reuters) - Former Microsoft Corp chief executive Steve Ballmer has won the bidding for the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers franchise with a $2 billion offer, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported on Thursday. Ballmer outbid two groups, one led by media mogul David Geffen that offered $1.6 billion and another from Los Angeles investors who bid $1.2 billion, the Times reported without identifying its source. Ballmer's spokesperson had no...